


The Crimson Bow

by joouheika



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-08
Updated: 2013-08-08
Packaged: 2017-12-22 19:16:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/917023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joouheika/pseuds/joouheika
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Levi plays the violin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Crimson Bow

They are scum.

Those who live within the slums of Wall Sina are nothing.

It is odd to think that the most interior wall, the wall behind which nobility and royalty reside that such a contradictory aspect exists.

But it does.

They do.

This is what Levi has been taught since he could walk.

What he’s observed.

The closer the light is the bigger the shadow, where there be the highly rich there be the highly poor. Or is it the lowly poor? Whichever the case they are nothing. They breathe, they exist, but that is not enough cause to give them merit. Perhaps starvation of the physical, of the spiritual will drive them into worth, into stepping stones, meant to be crushed beneath the weight of those born into a more hefty position.

Born scum, he will die scum.

It is filthy in the slums and he keeps as tidy as he can, the others laugh at him. What use is cleaning, they will only get dirty again, easily, without fail. Soap is hard to come by, and clean water just as much. You have to drink the clean water.

He keeps his long hair back in a braid. If you have a sharp blade, best not dull it on anyone but the flesh of one who might try to either take what little you have in the night, who might try to take you. One day he hopes to have it cut proper, by someone who knows what they’re doing, and with a knife that is only meant to cut hair.

That day isn’t today.

Today is just another day he thinks, one where he’ll see if the alleyway he usually sleeps in the summer isn’t as infested with bugs (not all of small stature, not all entirely in the visual likeliness of what one usually calls a bug). One where he’ll try to snatch food, flour, flower whatever if it’s remotely edible from some more fortunate than he and do it quick for if he’s caught it’ll either end as it has many times, with a bruised eye, a bloodied jaw, a broken nose. Whether it be his or theirs sometimes depends on luck.

It’s one where he’ll try in the night, to be as discreet as possible, to weave through those areas of grey, where light intertwines with dark. As much as they find them foul, the fat rich of the nobility of the interior do love drama, and drama is certain where there is misery. They can buy it all they like with no expense to their dignity (should they not get caught where and when it matters) and you could find the lord of old blood and the young successful entrepreneur alike so respected in the day, in the high society, here at night rolling with the muck, fucking in it even.

He likes to see them, in their suits, in their jewels, in their finery. Intoxicated. Their guard down. Their reservations gone. So much easier to pluck from them those jewels, a tie or jacket that’ll fetch a price enough on the black market, the side of the streets, the back alley of a certain pub or remedial herb shop- enough to eat for a week sometimes. 

To survive like this- are they human?

They are hunters.

Are they beasts then?

Not even that.

The prey is so much stronger.

Tonight he stays up hiding in the rafters of this particular auction house. While many of them get plucked off the streets, be you orphans or a sickly mother or brother who cannot watch you and you not the strength to oppose, what sort of belly you end up in or end up against- if you’re from the streets you’d not be sold here.

This was a house for irregulars, fantastic beasts, performers, people born missing, people of lost ethnicity, people of old tribes, freaks and beauties alike to be gawked at and bought at the whim and perversion of the buyer.

Buyers and potential buyers tend to get stupendously drunk and with much irony, vulnerable at these events, lose pockets and easy money. One mustn’t miss out on this if they can.

And he is small, shit they just saw moments ago on the streets, to be ignored, unnoticeable, without value, he is invisible here, where everything is of the highest value.

Tonight the bidding is fierce and it doesn’t seem like it’ll stop for a few more hours.

When it finally does and everyone starts to clear out, Levi will sink in with them and pick up whatever valuables have been dropped, abandoned, or potentially for the taking.

That is his intention.

It does not come to be.

He’s never had interest in what’s being sold before.

But-

Her hair is red like fire.

No wonder the bidding is intense. None have seen such hair before and aren’t likely to ever again. She is from an old tribe of nomads, not like but not unlike those who reside in the mountains of Wall Rose. Her tribe was once composed of skilled archers. If she is as well, Levi never learns that. It is not why she is desired.

It is red, her hair- exactly as the red bow in her hands and the violin it goes to.

He is scum so he should not know, he shouldn’t have come to know that in this cruel world such a beautiful thing exists.

The music of this violin.

The yelling, the numbers, rose rose rose once after clinking forth in her heavy chains, her red hair fanned out, flowing long over her shoulders, luscious, shimmering and most of all clean- she’d taken that violin up, tucking it under her chin, against the white cravat she wore with her gown just as crimson as her gorgeous locks, a gown that could have belonged to a princess- and started to play, what had caused the frenzy to rise from a dull roar to an all out killing cry.

It must have been composed by the devil, this song, it lures them in and traps them and they cannot escape, Levi cannot escape-

Not once has he even dreamed of stepping out from the dark, but from only a few notes of her violin he is bathed entirely in light. It is the devil’s song for there is no greater cruelty as this, to learn hope when he’d not had it to begin with, to want beyond himself, to want as if he be human, from the rumblings of the concept of religion that tries to claw its way back in, it’s taught god is merciful.

There is no mercy in this.

Truly the hunter.

She starts to sway, to dance almost, if not for the halting arch of her back, her hips, a twirl and kick, here and there, her hair flying with her as she plays as if no audience is enraptured by her. No one else is here, merely her and her violin.

Levi won’t cry ever again.

He won’t cry when Erwin finally convinces him, that someone as influential in the underground as he is needed, to lead the rest of them through the skies.

He won’t cry even when Erwin cuts his hair and promises to, with a blade meant only for cutting hair, to do it whenever he likes.

He won’t cry when those he’s told to lead- fall.

Because it is duty.

He won’t cry when he’s realized finally, he’s failed that duty.

Because he finds Eren’s eyes are like to this girl’s- green and blue, blue and green. 

Her brow furrowed in concentration, eyes shut within a leap, opening, glaring and bright after the landing. Seeing not you not you or you, merely she is the crimson bow, and upon the violin she plays and is, exists, lives one last final time.

If you do not live free you are dead.

When had it become in his mind, Eren’s eyes are not akin to hers but hers to his?

That night, within the confusion, the fury and the greed. Levi had snuck into her quarters where they kept her, like some princess she very much isn’t, in a high tower. Broke the window. The seller trying to decide which sum and whose influence he rather have, be the winning bid.

He thought her sleeping as she rested, exhausted on the bed, her violin far from her. As if it pained her to be near it now though only hours before it’d been as if another limb.

He wants it.

Not to sell, not for eating, not to look at, he wants to hold it, to play it.

When he’s picked it up and sure he’ll be able, as he always does, make a fast getaway- a kick slams into his gut and the violin is with the bow, rightfully.

She says to him-

“What say you- _scum_ , a thief in the night- you’ve come to take my life but are you ready to pay the price?”

She’s no longer in that beautiful gown anymore, but a nightdress, all silk and wispy, almost see through. Stepping into the moonlight, she stands before him, looking down on he, still a child and when their eyes meet-

She apologises.

“Forgive me. I did not know it’d be you.”

Before falling to her knees before him she places the violin back within the case he’d drawn it from. In there is the actual bow. She wraps it in a cloak, a navy blue one, almost odd to see blue on her person in any means. 

When she is done she holds it out to him.

What she saw in his eyes-

“God of death. My life is yours.”

Tonight she dies.

She will become someone’s possession, and they wish the violin with it. But she will not surrender it to them. Not if the god of death has come for her.

Levi remembers he said not a word. He’d taken her life then, the violin, not in a hurry if she be so willing to give it to him, even glancing back to her kneeling figure, where she looked almost peaceful. Almost in the midst of prayer, after having give him the violin.

Come morning he is long gone and the next time he visits that area they still speak of it, how red her blood had been, that expensive crimson bow, on the pavement below- after she’d thrown herself from the tower.

\--

It took him a while but eventually after the twenty fifth set or so of highly broken, mangled, good fucking luck walking now set of bones he’d had to break, to get the message across that no one was stealing from him the only thing he had-

Only then does Levi finally attempt to learn how to play the violin.

It’s slow going.

In the case aside from basic necessities for violin care that are a bitch to steal later elsewhere is a booklet with sheets of music. Some written by well known musicians long dead, some printed, some by the crimson bow herself. All is complete, Levi learns as he learns to play, learns to read music before he learns how to read letters (Erwin told him if he knew how to read music then an alphabet wouldn’t be a problem though the two so vastly different) all complete he learns- aside from one song- “The Crimson Bow”.

It is the song of the girl’s namesake if a title could even be a name. Perhaps her captors in further cruelty had decided to call her such because they’d seen these notes of hers, or she’d written it in honor of herself. No one else would honor her, respect her.

It is the song she played that night in the auction house.

There are lyrics that go along to it, on the sheet music, words unsung but heard with every note.

Lyrics he recalls, when Eren looks at him truly the first time, eyes green blue and blue green and within them Levi saw a monster, the true god of death. Like she had in him all those years ago.

And Levi decided then to surrender his life as she had, to this god.

\--

Eren knocked but Corporal Levi had not heard.

He enters anyway, hoping his apologies for his intrusion will be enough. He’d been sent to give Commander Erwin finished paperwork (by Hanji who’d told him-) with his task done he must return to Corporal Levi.

It’s unusual that Levi not had heard him, had not heard a thing. But Eren soon sees the reason for this.

Levi holds within his hands a red violin and its bow. Staring out the window, beyond the woods, beyond the wall, to the sky- he sees Eren within the reflection. 

He’d been working on completing that unfinished song once more and upon seeing Eren’s inquiring gaze, mirrored within the clean glass, Levi’s reply is to tuck the instrument to his chin, against his white cravat, taking up the bow- he plays this war song.

It is done.

He hears it, he knows now, what must be the rest of the song.

It has been within Eren’s gaze this entire time.

With every new note, he rocks his body, back and forth, tilting, swirling with the beat, the same violence when he brings down his blade upon the foe is within his strong controlled movements. How much control must be applied so nothing break- Levi swears for a moment, he’d seen within the glass- once he’d started to play Eren’s eyes had flashed gold, and turning to confirm this, closing his eyes within this brief moment, to open them again, searching, turning sharp- the rest of the notes come so easily peering into Eren’s gaze. One enraptured. Found. Oh lost child of Maria, is the glimpse of freedom all but enough for you? 

No.

She saw it too that time, before she fell, the crimson bow- within Levi’s eyes, the true desire to be free. He’d heard it played upon her violin. It’d been the first time he’d truly come to desire something, and it’d been the start of his recognition. They are caged, worse than starving wolves, beyond the walls they cannot go, they cannot by their own vices and by the threat of the titans- go as they please, live as they please- and that-

Is not acceptable.

Who had freed who that night?

Levi had accepted Erwin’s offer to join the Recon Corps because he was ready, as the god of death, for whatever the cost to be paid (but does he truly pay the toll) for this freedom, the whole lot of them, so long as his glimpse of freedom be not only a few seconds, a few moments of his already too long, too retched life.

Levi will pay that price with his own life.

As he has taken Eren’s life he will give his to Eren.

Eren who looks upon him now and cannot look away, who shies so often from his direct gaze, finding it searching, finding it expecting, inspecting, and Eren always feels so bare beneath it, to his bones, to the core of his soul- should monsters have even that. Is he human? He is.

But he is also something else.

Levi knows what it is, has known all this time.

Approaches Eren as he plays the final notes of this song, moving unrelenting, hips swaying, crouching, fingers white when all he hears through his music, Eren’s breath catching.

And when the song has ended.

Eren wipes away what tears have fallen, though he’d not notice them this entire time, never expects them.

By now Levi is directly before him, pleased like that time they’d first met and Eren’s gaze does not leave his and answers, truthfully, whole heartedly-

“That was wonderful sir.”

Eren’s hands are not idle at his sides, they want to clutch, they want to hold-

Levi holds out the violin and its bow to Eren.

“Care to give it a try?”

Enthusiastically Eren nods, though thinking upon it-

“Will it be alright sir? I have never handled an instrument before.”

Levi doesn’t look like he cares, but before Eren can feel wholly chasten, Levi is more patient than usual.

“We all start at this point. The beginning. We are the same in this. It’s my intention to teach you or I’d not made the offer, don’t that make sense? Damn brat. Use your head.”

Eren does, nodding.

Touch so terribly gentle upon receiving the violin, it takes everything within Levi to direct Eren’s wrists, his hands and arms, the change in his stance, he already mimics from watching Levi- without his full strength, less he ruin everything. He could ruin everything. He could cage Eren in here and have him all to himself, chain him, tie him down, make him fall to his knees, and pray upon the rubble of a crimson bow, never to hear that song again in anything but an echo.

But he does not want that.

Not as much as he wants to see too, as many as the times Eren has seen him- outlined against the blue sky, the anticipation to struggle beneath it not from captivity but exploration- to be truly free-

Eren can feel Levi’s breath against his ear. Holding him as he holds the violin.

“Like this. Not bad, Eren.”

For someone who’s never held a violin before he looks like he knows what he’s doing.

And when Eren plays his first note.

The sound too isn’t bad.


End file.
